The Vort: The Big Reveal

Aloha!
The Vort/Lobster Random © 2008 Rebellion Developments/2000AD
Created by Si Spurrier (writing as G. Powell) and Me

With the new 2000AD out, I think it's safe to talk about the final episode of The Vort without spoiling anybody's fun. Reaction has been mixed, but not as virulent as I'd feared; the feedback I've had has all been very measured and reasonable. Much of the feeback has been along the lines that The Vort had developed its own very distinctive character, so having Crispy turn out to be Lobster Random felt a bit jarring, but most people seem to have enjoyed it overall.

Meanwhile, the Big Reveal finally gives me the chance to give credit where credit's due; first of all, G. Powell was of course Si Spurrier (which explains how "he" could get a series at 2000AD apparently without doing a Future Shock first). Thanks to Si for writing such a meaty story for me to work on; not only was it chock-full of cool stuff to draw, but each five-page episode was a journey in itself, yet still smoothly built up the overall picture as the series advanced. A classic example of the "show not tell" school of writing.
(Thanks also to those of you who flattered me by thinking I was G. Powell; your faith in my writing abilities, however misplaced, is much appreciated :-)

My original concept design for the alien Frogs, with whale-like faces.
The Vort © 2008 Rebellion Developments/2000AD

Created by Si Spurrier (writing as G. Powell) and Me

Big thankings too to Carl Critchlow for his open and generous collaboration in the design of the world of The Vort. Because the next series of Lobster Random re-uses settings from The Vort, we both supplied designs to the series; most notable was Carl's design for the faces of the Frogs. My original concept (above) featured a back-end-first torso design (inspired by the work of SF illustrator Wayne Douglas Barlowe) and a cetacian-type head with a flip-top jaw. This looked really alien but didn't seem to me to have the sinister and vicious-looking quality demanded by the script.

Carl Critchlow's concept design for the Frog head
The Vort © 2008 Rebellion Developments/2000AD

Created by Si Spurrier (writing as G. Powell) and Me

Happily, Carl had come up with an excellent head design (above) but was stuck for a body. I glued the two together (below) and the result was pretty much what appeared in the strip - though in practice the eyes drifted a bit further down towards the jaw, making the head look a little more chameleon-like.

Carl Critchlow's head on my body; the composite Frog design that made it into the strip.
The Vort © 2008 Rebellion Developments/2000AD

Created by Si Spurrier (writing as G. Powell) and Me

Cover to the final part of The Vort (2000AD Prog 1596)
The Vort © Rebellion Developments/2000AD
www.2000ADonline.com
The Vort created by G. Powell & Me

The final episode of The Vort is out, and we have the big reveal as to Crispy's identity. If you've read it, you'll either love it or hate it. I'm saving my comments till the end of the week, so everyone will have had a chance to read the thing before I talk about the big spoiler.

The Vort: Catching Up

Having finished The Vort, Matt fucks off to Dublin
The Vort © 2008 Rebellion Developments/2000AD
The Vort created by G Powell & Me.

Gordon Murray lied to us, dear friends; time flies by whether you’re the driver of a train or not.

Radar problems caused delays and cancellations at Dublin airport.

Despite my firm intentions to do a blog post for each episode of The Vort, I realize to my horror that it's nearly a month since I last posted anything, and 2000AD Prog 1595 (containing part 7 of 8) has arrived on my doormat already. I knew I'd lose a couple of weeks finishing the last two episodes (part 8 was due by the end of June), but my recovery time afterwards was a bit longer than I expected, and then I went away to Dublin for a couple of days and on the way home got caught in the shite-storm when the radar broke down at Dublin airport. Once I got back I needed a day to sleep that off.

So, now I've finished explaining how the dog ate my homework, let's have a quick summary of stuff I was going to say in those putative weekly blog posts.

A page of G. Powell's script including page layout diagram (ringed in red) opposite the finished page.
Click on picture to see a larger version.
The Vort © 2008 Rebellion Developments/2000AD
The Vort created by G Powell & Me.

Page Layout Diagrams
Earthlet Arthur Wyatt asked if I'd show one of G Powell's scripts with page layout diagram, so here's the script for page one along with the finished page for comparison. Mr Powell's diagram is quite small, so I've ringed it in red.

Meridien Bless with her plain-prism Nikon F2 and 80-200mm lens.
To avoid any possible copyright problems, "Nikon" becomes "Nixon" on the camera.
The Vort © 2008 Rebellion Developments/2000AD
The Vort created by G Powell & Me.

Meridien Bless's Camera Equipment*
*you may want to skip to the next bit
Being a bit of a photography nut, I got quite caught up in the mechanics of how Bless would be able to photograph in an environment where nothing electronic works. Camera equipment was pretty straightforward; any camera with a mechanical shutter will work perfectly well without batteries. I'd have liked to have equipped Bless with a classic Leica rangefinder, but that wouldn't have given her access to the sort of telephoto lens she would have needed to photograph the Frogs on the bubbleberg in episode 3. In the end I opted for an all-mechanical plain-prism Nikon F2 SLR kitted out with the original AF-Nikkor 80-200mm f2.8 zoom and the classic Angenieux AF 28-70mm f2.6-2.8 zoom (these Nikon-fit AF lenses work like manual-focus lenses when attached to manual cameras.)

Meridien Bless takes a light-meter reading using a non-electronic "extinction meter".
The Vort © 2008 Rebellion Developments/2000AD
The Vort created by G Powell & Me.

Light metering was more of an issue; even old hand meters are battery powered. Then I remembered that, in the 1960's, my dad had used some sort of simple metering device with no electronics - it was a sort of scope you looked through, though I couldn't remember how it worked. A bit of Googling told me this device was called an "extinction meter" and that it did indeed work without any sort of electronics - you can see Bless using one in part 6 panel 3.
As to how film would survive without fogging in such a powerful electromagnetic field... I can only assume that APCU have some sort of advanced emulsion that's sensitive to visible light only.

Just Can't Stand The Rai-ain
Drawing a comic is like running a marathon; you start off fresh and full of enthusiasm, but by the end it's almost always a test of stamina and endurance as you grind towards the finish line. To be fair, The Vort's not been too bad; at forty pages, it may even be the shortest self-contained colour series I've ever done. The fact that it's set in the jungle also cuts down the amount of perspective drawing, something that always slows a project down.
Balanced against that is having to draw all those APCU soldiers in their complicated camouflage-patterened uniforms and slimy-looking Genekit. I don't regret designing the uniforms as I did - you want character costumes to look interesting and distinctive - but by episode 4 I was glad when the script described everyone wearing rain capes - which hide a multitude of sins.

The stages of adding rain to a panel: Top left: no rain, top right: small background drops, bottom left: medium mid ground drops, bottom right: large foreground drops. Each layer of rain had a different Motion Blur filter setting applied to it in Photoshop.
Click on picture to see a larger version.
The Vort © 2008 Rebellion Developments/2000AD
The Vort created by G Powell & Me.

Being me, of course, I couldn't let it be that simple. As the same time as I was saving work drawing the soldiers, I added to my burdens by the incredibly faffy way I did the rain itself. To give a sense of depth and movement, I drew rain on three different layers (tiny strokes for the background, medium strokes for the mid ground, and big strokes for the foreground), then added a different degree of Motion Blur filter to each layer. On pages where the rain is falling in different directions in different panels, I'd have to select individual panels and add filters to each one - I think the most fiddly page had four selections and twelve filter operations. I'd also sometimes colour the layers of rain differently to help add a sense of depth.
Half the time, I'm not sure if this stuff is really noticeable on the printed page; still, I wouldn't feel right if I missed it out, and besides, when I got to part 7 page 2 when the rain stopped... it was almost worth it just for the blissful sense of relief.

Cover rough for next week's 2000AD (Prog 1596): a Ditko-inspired "Who is Crispy?" cover.
Don't worry, the finished version is coloured in with crayons and everything.
The Vort © 2008 Rebellion Developments/2000AD
The Vort created by G Powell & Me.

Next Week on The Vort
Bless finds some disturbing evidence which changes her whole understanding of what was happening on The Vort. We finally get to find out who Crispy is, and I get another cover.

The Vort Part 2: Naughty Bits

Menaced by the Frogs... cover to 2000AD Prog 1590
The Vort © Rebellion Developments/2000AD
Created by G. Powell & Me.

The Vort part 2 is upon us, with my 5th cover for 2000AD (shown above, in all its unlettered glory). This episode also contains two further minor landmarks for me. Though they're "blink-and-you'll-miss-them" small, those pages contain my first drawings of bare breasts and someone weeing in a mainstream comic (see below). If my mentioning this seems a bit like a vicar's giggly virginal middle-aged daughter congratulating herself on daringly using the word "bum," well… I suppose you're right.

Naughty bits: top: page one, panel one, bottom: page three, panel four
The Vort © Rebellion Developments/2000AD
Created by G. Powell & Me.

Of course, I drew naked folks and all sorts of nastiness in Lazarus Churchyard, waaayy back in 1991, but a) Warren made me do it and b) doing this stuff in 2000AD feels like a bigger deal, because I can't help but think of it as the comic I read as a child. In fact, I've always referred to the IPC/Fleetway/Egmont/Rebellion (pick an era) hands-off editing style as "scanning for tits and willies" (since you'd often get no feedback at all unless there was something objectionable to be changed). It usually was "tits and willies" too, since while 2000AD has pushed the boundaries in a number of ways over the years, like all mainstream British comics it tends to be happier dealing with violence than sex. Before the introduction of female judges in the early 80's, even significant female characters were next to unknown in British action (aka "Boy's") comics; Professor Jocelyn Peabody from Dan Dare is the only one I can think of. Alan Moore really broke through with The Ballad of Halo Jones in 1986 (especially book 3, a war story with a predominantly female cast that even fits in an elliptical reference to menstruation). John Smith, too, has to be credited with introducing sexually liberated female characters (Tyranny Rex and Pussyfoot Five) along with allusions to all kinds of sexual themes.
And most recently, of course, we've had Simon B Davis's "big purple willy" episode of Stone Island. Got to admit, that was a line I didn't expect to see crossed. Mind you, neither did Ian Edginton, who hadn't put it in the script (when he saw it, he rang me in a state of shock, wailing "there's a big purple willy right in the middle of my strip!" in a quavering voice. And him a married man, too.)

So, rather naïvely, I was slightly surprised to see such open references to Bless sleeping with Veldt in the scripts for The Vort. I mean, given the age of the average Earthlet these days, it's only right for us to admit that men and women engage in - let's not mince words here - horizontal interpersonal man-woman wibbly-wobbliness. For myself, I'm torn between sticking with visual solutions that allude to naughtiness without showing it (just because it's a fun game), and going full ahead to see if I can be the first artist to cross that final barrier and slip a spurting stiffie into 2000AD (pardon my French, vicar).
(After all, we're well behind Johnny Foreigner on this one; Jean "Mœbius" Giraud managed that trick back in 1977 in the Blade Runner-inspiring detective story The Long Tomorrow, which somehow even made it into Epic Comics' US editions without being censored).

It does make you wonder a little as to why images of willies have been so thoroughly banned for so long; after all, half of us come with them built in and the other half are probably going to find out what they look like sooner or later. Willies aren't especially pretty, but it's not as if the world will come to an end if we see the odd picture of one now and again, surely.

Except... since that last episode of Stone Island, the world economy has gone into a spin, there have been catastrophic natural disasters in Burma and China, food and petrol prices have soared, and violent youth crime has gone spiralling out of control. Coincidence? All I can say is, if, in ten years from now, you find yourself living in a landscape of shattered rubble and burnt-out cars, wearing a mohican and Mad Max-style bondage gear, and dividing your time between bizarre gladiatorial games and roasting dead dogs on a spit, you'll know who to blame, wont you?

The Vort Part 1: Back to the Future

Jeep-Beastie from page one of The Vort
The Vort © 2008 Rebellion Developments/2000AD
Created by G. Powell & Me.

2000AD Prog 1589 is out and with it episode 1 of The Vort. This series has an unusually short lead time; I'm still working on the last 2 parts. I usually dread having anything come out while I'm working on it, for if the job doesn't come out as intended, it becomes very hard to stay motivated. Luckily, episode one has printed exactly as I envisaged. I was more nervous about this episode than most of my recent colour stuff, because I was trying some new techniques, and there's always the possibility that can turn round and bite you.

Left: When I started colouring, I found painting onto white paper slow and unsatisfactory (The Third World War, Crisis, Fleetway Editions 1988) Right: You can see here that I'm painting onto a red ground, adding highlights, shading and the odd additional colour as I go. This is quicker and gives a more unified colour scheme (Lazarus Churchyard, Blast, 1991)
The Third World War © 1988 Rebellion Developments (?). Created by Pat Mills & Carlos Ezquerra.
Lazarus Churchyard © 2008 Warren Ellis & Me.

Well, I say "new" - in fact, I'm recapturing a way of working I first devised for painted artwork back in the late 80's. On my first colour job, I'd found that my colouring was very slow and inconsistent; I was working by adding colours to white paper and the simple business of deciding what colour to pick for each object in each panel was taking me ages. I decided to try and work out a system to let me produce colour in a consistent way at a faster pace.
I found I worked best if, instead of trying to put colour onto white paper, I covered the whole page with a glaze of mid-tone colour, then used paint and crayon to pull out highlights, and added transparent glazes for shading. The combination of underlying colour and shadow colour helped pull all the colours in an image together with very little effort.
At first I painted over my inks, obscuring them a little and giving the whole thing a more painterly look. Later I took to painting over the pencils and inking onto the paint; this isn't as difficult as it sounds, but it limits your options for making mistakes in the inking! With some variation, this was the method I used for Lazarus Churchyard and Kingdom Of The Wicked, and that method of thinking about colour has served me ever since.

Top: In this panel from Scarlet Traces (2000), I still working mostly with flat colour and simple gradients - a technique left over from the time before I had a graphics tablet. Bottom: By the time I started Scarlet Traces: The Great Game (2005), I was able to think about a more painterly approach - but the technique was slow.
Scarlet Traces © 2008 Ian Edginton & Me

When I first switched to computer colouring, I didn't have the technique to recreate what I'd been doing with paint; later on, as I got more sophisticated (and got a copy of Corel Painter), I was able to do more painterly stuff (see the first 10 pages of Scarlet Traces: The Great Game) but the trouble is, I'm not a natural painter, and I become hesitant when I have to paint rather than just colour in. If that seems a bit obscure, the difference is, with colouring the black of the drawing takes care of the dark areas; with painting, you add the dark tones in colour and I find that really difficult for some reason. Short version: every time I try and paint, I'm damn slow.

When I came to do The Vort, I was trying to think of a new approach. I didn't just want to repeat what I'd been doing with Scarlet Traces, proud as I am of it, but I needed some way of working quickly enough to meet my deadlines. The answer struck me when I picked up a copy of Ralph Steadman's book I Leonardo; here was a guy producing elaborate colour work which is strongly rooted in drawing as much as painting. The controlled chaos of Steadman's work reminded me of something I'd idly noticed when finishing the drawing stage of my comics in Illustrator.

Click on image to see larger version.
1) Roughs drawn in Adobe Illustrator. 2) "Pencilling" added to refine important details. 3) "Inks". 4) "Inks" are imported into Photoshop; rough layer is converted to transparent colour and flat colour is put under the drawing. 5) Basic flat colouring added 6) Highlights and shadows added to finish.
The Vort © 2008 Rebellion Developments/2000AD
Created by G. Powell & Me.

When I draw on computer, I go through about four stages from blank "canvas" to finished drawing; there are 2 stages of roughs, a "pencils" stage and "inks." Each stage is drawn in a darker grey and a finer line than the one before; the first roughs are a very light grey, the "inks," of course, black. Before I export the inks to Photoshop, I make a copy of the file and delete all the unwanted layers. Sometimes, before I do this, I switch on all the layers, and you get a sort of dark halo around the inks where all the previous stages are visible. Sometimes too, you get "ghosts," where I've included stuff in the roughs that have been changed at a later stage in the drawing. I realised that if I exported the rough layers and made them transparent, they could add just the slight organic, chaotic edge I was looking for, without any additional effort.

Better still, it gives the work more of a "painted" look, but it's all done by drawing.

Click on image to see larger version
Page three test version (left) and re-coloured version (right).
The Vort © 2008 Rebellion Developments/2000AD
Created by G. Powell & Me.

My first try was page 3 (the scene with Bless and Veldt in the audience at the speech-giving). For various reasons, this page took me ages, but by the time I'd got it finished, I'd made my mistakes and knew where I was going. In fact, the thing that really persuaded me the technique was good was when I realized I needed to change to colour scheme on the whole page, and managed to re-colour it in half an hour flat!

The Vort Preview

The enigmatic Crispy
From the forthcoming series The Vort
© 2008 Rebellion Developments/2000AD
The Vort created by G. Powell & Me.

This week's 2000AD contained an announcement that my latest project, The Vort, will be one of the slew of new stories staring next week. It's a double first for me; a full-colour series for 2000AD, written by newcomer G. Powell (in other words, it's not black & white and not written by Ian Edginton. The scar where they had to separate us surgically is still smarting :-)

Journalist Meridien Bless
From the forthcoming series The Vort
© 2008 Rebellion Developments/2000AD
The Vort created by G. Powell & Me.

The Vort is also a departure from my usual 2000AD subject matter; it's a future war story set on a bizarre alien planet made entirely of water, and permeated by a powerful electromagnetic field that prevents electronics from functioning. This means that all the technology on the Vort is either ultra low-tech (manual typewriters and hand bells for sounding the alarm) or "genekit" (biological rifles and sensor devices). Imagine Apocalypse Now with set dressing by H.R. Giger and you have a rough idea of what we're aiming for.

Chairman Dil
From the forthcoming series The Vort
© 2008 Rebellion Developments/2000AD
The Vort created by G. Powell & Me.

The story follows journalist Meridien Bless as she arrives on The Vort to cover a visit to the war zone by bigwig Chairman Dil; while there she begins discovering disquieting things about the nature of the war. It's about corporate imperialism and the brutalization of people in terrible situations, but it's also a corking good adventure story with a terrific, claustrophobic atmosphere. To add to the sense of confinement and suffocation, the whole thing is designed on a strict eight-panel grid (Mr. Powell's scripts even include page layout diagrams). I'll be interested to see what people make of it; it's a very different kettle of fish from Leviathan & Stickleback, but judging from this, we may expect great things in the future from Mr. Powell.